How do you choose a website design and development company?
As the online world is expanding rapidly, it’s important to have a website for your business. And obviously you are looking for a great outcome from the website or web application to achieve your target. Therefore you should make the right choice by choosing a worthy web development company.
But how do you know which one is credible?
Everybody is saying that they are better (sometimes BEST) than others. But you know, most of them don’t do justice with their promises. They are reducing prices on a daily basis, and sometimes offering at complete free of cost. Basically they are making you fool in a smart way. They are taking advantage of your gentleness. Their main target is to get new clients but not retain existing clients. Now what you should do?
So to find an appropriate answer we should identify problems first which make our task easier. But before identifying problems let’s have a look at what makes your website more better than your competitors, these are:
The Speed:
The faster your website loads into visitors device/browsers, you will get the first chance to engage your visitors or customers.
The Presentation:
You should display valuable information first, which attracts your visitors to spend more time on your website. All information should be linked with other related information. One thing you must keep in mind that to do such a thing you should study your visitors mind, that is what they are looking for. What colors they prefer, the navigation of the site, etc. etc. the study of such presentation is commonly known as “Communication Design”.
Device Friendliness:
Commonly known as Mobile friendly website, it is because generally websites are built and tested in normal desktop or laptop which has bigger screen size than Mobile which has lower screen size. However we generally use term Device friendly then only Mobile friendly because there many different screen sizes available in the market. Also there are different Operating systems and browsers, so your website must be compatible for all these at least which are most common for your visitors. Please read a brief of our research here.
SEO friendliness:
Your website must be SEO friendly and up-to-date, so search engines like google, bing, yahoo, etc. give you better ranking than your competitors. Please read more valuable information on SEO here.
Framework and/or CMS:
If you want to build a dynamic website where you can regularly update your website content, thus page content, blogs, product, services etc. you must choose a better framework and/or CMS for your website. Please note that popular CMS always does not mean a better CMS for your website. If your CMS is not good enough you never be in peace of mind. You can read our article choosing better framework and/ or CMS here for more information.
Maintenance:
It is an important thing to keep your website speedy, secure and up to date for modern browsers and devices.
Fresh Content:
You should regularly update your content to make your website fresh. It is also good for your SEO rank as search engines are content hungry. Please keep a note that your content should be truthful and properly explained. Hidden or misleading information will always have a negative impact.
Now let see what the problem is to find a web developer or development company who can serve you better.
In the crowded web world, everyone claims to provide the best service, though everyone of them are not competent.Pros and cons of individual freelance designers or developers:
The only pros about individual freelance designers or developers are – they are cheaper. As because they are basically jobless due there their limited knowledge and/or co-working capability. Furthermore, they are not up to date as per modern technologies as they don’t have enough interest and /or time for further study and there is no one who can guide/introduce them with new technologies. Yes! they might make a website using few popular CMS, free themes, few common plugins readily available but finally it will act like a visiting card and you should not expect it to be as worthy as you are looking for. Thus they are not at all good to serve you better. And make sure that one individual can not be good in all different technologies used in websites. In few cases freelancers might work in a company for full time, these guys are not trustworthy at all their expectations does not meet their capalities so started freelancing, they also hve problem with timeliness and problem in quick response.Pros and cons of Well Known Companies:
Therefore you must look for a company who has one or more experts on the above mentioned technology/ skills. Now if you do not have much time but enough budget for your website you should straight away go to any well known and reputed company. It is as similar as your smart decision to choose Sony or Samsung for your 55 inch smart TV, as you know you don’t have much knowledge about TV and don’t have enough time to research, so Sony and Samsung is a good brand for their product and after sale service. But they will be costly enough. Another problem of these companies is large amounts of documentation and strict process flow, which takes a lot of time. However this might not be good for a small website but it is necessary for a good website and/or software development.Pros and cons of small Companies and/or Startups:
Now a plot is created, suspense is on high, So now I must disclose to you what you are actually looking for in this article. As you are reading this line means you have a moderate budget but high expectations from your website. Therefore you should have time to do some research to compensate for your budget.Yes! Small companies or Startups can fulfil your needs. Uffff!…. Sounds good… right? Great, but you should be aware of a few things before choosing the right company which fits your project.
The company you chose should have below qualities…
Passion for what they are doing:
As Gandhi Said, “Service which is rendered without joy helps neither the servant nor the served”. So I think no more explanation is required.Truthful on every aspect of project cycle:
See if they point out a few glitches in your idea or asking you for a few better features will really help your business. If so they really spent time on analysing your project which is good for them. Here the cost of development can increase or decrease. If, decrease you can be 90% sure about Truthfulness, however it might increase, in that case, analyze how good the suggestion is or it’s just to make more money. If they deny certain tasks that they can not offer is another example of Truthfulness.How company behaves with employees:
It is important for a long term project. As if a company is not good with it’s employees it will affect their retraction rate and will have a high impact on your project. In another way if a company is not good with its own employees how good they will be with you?Expertise in different segments of the website development:
It is a very important aspect of this discussion because many people think that website development is a single-handed job. But it’s not true. It involves different research and technologies so for an individual it can not be done properly. Therefore the company you choose must have experts in all these different fields and direct employees. So they can have full control over them.Easy to communicate
Please keep in mind that language, pronunciation, time zone can be a barrier of choosing the right company for your project. The people of the company should be familiar with your language, pronunciation and time zone. Otherwise there will be a big gap between you and the company you have chosen, which will impact your project badly.Company terms
Finally see company policy and terms which includes:- Non Disclosure Agreement or NDA
- Change of scope of work at development time
- In case of delay from either side or natural cause
- Payment terms
- Source code rights
- Overall copyright
- After-sales support
Now the question is how do you judge these qualities…
In general blogs they will say, you should check their Website, Portfolio, client reviews, Compare Cost, etc. etc. Now how do you know that what they portray in their website (or in reference sites) actually belongs to them or not. Because in most of the cases it is managed by them only and they know what to display and what to hide. Portfolio might be fake or Borrowed from other companies/individuals they tied up. Reviews can be (even in Google) given by friends or from fake ids including few originals. In my previous company, there was a project like this to make fake reviews of products in eCommerce sites. The seller would pay you the money and will tell you to buy his/her products and give good reviews there. Now, whom would you believe?So to judge above qualities you can do the following …
Shortlist:
Find and shortlist a few companies. It is better if you have some reference from your friends or co-workers. Now find a few live websites and/or web applications built by them and contact those companies for their experience for the project, both on development and after sale experience. Just don’t judge (good or bad) any company on the basis of google reviews or similar like that.Talk to owner/s:
Just don’t talk with sales people, also talk to company owner/s and discuss about the company, how its started and how its going now. Generally sales people will always say “YES” on your face and might misguide you for their own benefits.- You should look for that type of company (in case of a small company) where the owner has technical know-how or not. If yes good else bad. And make sure it is not their part time business.
- True technical owners generally do not mis-promise because for them, reputation is more important than sales.
